“I knew that with my performance if I stayed in the village without Muyang’s help, I couldn’t even complete my basic duties. Continuing like that, forget about returning to the city—even surviving in the village would be difficult. But my situation had nothing to do with Muyang because he never asked me to join him in the countryside. He kept advising me to stay in the suburban areas.
I was the one who insisted on accompanying him. When he said no, I thought he was worried about my hardships. Who knew he meant no.” Ling Yi closed her eyes. “If he hadn’t given up his university spot for me, I probably wouldn’t be standing here talking to you.”
Ling Yi didn’t share the more specific details with Fei Ni—even now, she found them too embarrassing to mention. After Fang Muyang was recommended for university, she contemplated death, and since he had never drawn her portrait, she wanted him to draw one before she died. Fang Muyang didn’t know her intentions, but given her circumstances when she asked him to draw her, he couldn’t refuse. To leave a deeper impression, she decided to make it different.
That day, when everyone at the youth station went to watch a movie, she called Fang Muyang back. After the others left, she bolted the door and began unbuttoning her clothes one by one. She asked if he had ever drawn the human figure, saying now he could—whether he burned or buried the drawing afterward was up to him.
She wanted him to remember her at her best, something he’d never forget. But Fang Muyang didn’t pick up his pen. Instead, he turned and walked to the door, closing it behind him, saying he was going to watch the movie. It didn’t matter if Ling Yi went or not since she’d have plenty of opportunities to watch movies at university.
With Fang Muyang’s help, Ling Yi completed all her assigned tasks on time and in full. In the villagers’ eyes, she was a very qualified reform subject, transformed from an educated youth who fainted from heatstroke on her first day of work into a true laborer. When Fang Muyang recommended her, there wasn’t much opposition.
Fei Ni wanted to ask: if you were willing to go so far to accompany Fang Muyang then, why didn’t you visit him when your university and the hospital were so close? Why did I have to wait so many hours at your school before you’d meet me, only to disappear completely afterward? But before she could ask, she already knew the answer. Before going to the countryside, Ling Yi had never truly experienced hardship—hadn’t even really seen it, except perhaps in passing, wrapped in romantic illusions.
Someone like herself, who had grown up watching her parents’ struggles, would never accompany someone she merely liked to a remote place for the sake of love. At most, she might send some food, unsigned, fearing the recipient might get the wrong idea. Those who had never experienced hardship, when suddenly faced with it, tend to exaggerate its power—afterward, they avoid not just experiencing it but even witnessing it. Moreover, the person Ling Yi had followed was a considerate Fang Muyang who could help solve her problems, not the one lying helpless in a hospital bed who might only bring her trouble.
“I was never his ex-girlfriend. Before you, he never had any girlfriend. He always liked you. So, could you please help clarify in the newspaper that the article wasn’t accurate?”
Ling Yi forced these words through clenched teeth, head bowed, feeling shameless even making such a request.
If just one key piece of information in an article proves seriously inaccurate, the credibility of the entire piece becomes questionable. If they got wrong such a basic premise as whether there was an ex-girlfriend, how could anything else be trusted? Even if other details were true, no one would believe them entirely.
Both Ling Yi and Fei Ni understood this, and Fei Ni didn’t entirely believe Ling Yi’s words.
“I have no reason to lie about this. He loved drawing so much, yet he never drew a single portrait of me.” She would have preferred if Fang Muyang had liked her, rather than her having imagined it all. Ling Yi had spent months examining her relationship with Fang Muyang, realizing he had never liked her—it had always been that way. He would rather draw the doorman than her portrait, and when he did include her in drawings, she was just background for cats, without even a face.
She had cried looking at the cat in the drawing, and Fang Muyang had consoled her with a plastic-thread bracelet. She thought he had made it specially for her and treasured it, only to learn much later from him that he had bought it. He even said if she liked it, he could buy her two more but warned her upfront—no bargaining. Ling Yi’s first thought was that Fang Muyang had been cheated. Though he was usually mischievous and played pranks, he would never cheat girls out of money—if he cheated anyone, it would only be much older boys.
She refused to buy any, and he let it go. Later, she had mistaken his sympathy in difficult times for affection. No matter how much he urged her to stay in the suburbs, she insisted on going with him. Before going, she hadn’t imagined the conditions would be so harsh, but even if she had known, she would still have gone. Back then, she believed love could conquer all, but once there, she discovered her feelings for Fang Muyang could only overcome her feelings for other men—nothing else. They couldn’t overcome the harsh environment, the heavy labor, or her uncertainty about the future.
Before going to the countryside, she had admired those who had talent but didn’t make a big deal of it, like Fang Muyang drawing casually on feed bags and grass paper. After arriving, she found that the talents she had once admired became useless—not only did others look down on them, but she no longer saw them as skills. Being good at playing the violin was far less valuable than being good at sawing wood, and coincidentally, Fang Muyang had learned carpentry, could draw for the locals, and was good at physical labor.
The type of person she liked before and after going to the countryside was completely different, and coincidentally, Fang Muyang satisfied both. That’s why she could continue liking him. If he had only known how to play violin and draw, he would have been completely useless in the countryside, and she wouldn’t have liked such a person. She liked every version of Fang Muyang except when he was ill—something she sometimes couldn’t even admit to herself. Yet at no stage had Fang Muyang ever liked her.
“Muyang said… he was grateful that you were the one who cared for him, not me. He had liked you early on and even wanted to go to the same place as you for rural work, but you told him you needed to continue studying and wouldn’t have to go. He felt you were out of his league then. Later, when you came to care for him in the hospital, it was an unexpected joy. If I had been the one caring for him, he still wouldn’t have married me. He never liked me—whenever people teased that we were a couple, he always denied it.”
Fei Ni remembered that Fang Muyang had indeed asked where she wanted to go for rural work, and she had said she needed to continue studying. She had thought he was just making casual conversation, surely having asked many others.
Could Fang Muyang have wanted to go with her then? But even if he had, what difference would it make? She would never have gone. She could never have done what Ling Yi did—going to accompany Fang Muyang in the countryside without even checking the conditions. Just as she could never have accepted Fang Muyang’s university spot and then failed to visit him regularly in the hospital.
“Do you think I’m making excuses, finding reasons for not caring for him in the hospital? I don’t entirely believe what he said either. He did like you before, but that liking wasn’t even enough to make him stay somewhere close to you. As soon as you said you weren’t going, he chose the most remote place, not caring if you’d ever see each other again. Without you, he lived quite well in the countryside.”
Fei Ni and Fang Muyang’s relationship had developed in the hospital. If she had been the one caring for him, even if he hadn’t liked her before, spending so much time together would have led to feelings. When Fang Muyang said he was grateful, it was probably eighty percent because he was satisfied with his marriage to Fei Ni, but twenty percent was to give her conscience an easy way out.
Even at the end, Ling Yi never explained why she didn’t visit Fang Muyang. She could only apologize for this, not explain it.
“If only we could have taken the college entrance exam then, I wouldn’t have needed to take Muyang’s spot.” Though she wouldn’t have done as well as Fei Ni, she could have gotten into university with her abilities. She would have attended school properly and openly, but the era and fate had to test her, forcing out her worst side.
If there had been normal college entrance exams, both she and Fang Muyang would have gone to university, and she would have remained a girl who knew nothing of life’s hardships, showing only gentleness to everyone, with ingratitude having nothing to do with her. But fate hadn’t just tested her—it had tested others too, and reality proved she wasn’t the only one who had choices. She couldn’t justify herself with complete conviction.
Fei Ni and Ling Yi were not kindred spirits, but this one thing Ling Yi said was exactly what Fei Ni had always thought.
She had always hoped for earlier college entrance exams, but if they had never been suspended, would she and Fang Muyang have married?
The answer was probably no.
Ling Yi didn’t get a definite promise from Fei Ni about the clarification, but she dared not and could not make such a request a second time.
They suddenly found themselves with nothing to say, and Ling Yi couldn’t help but ask the question she had been pondering: “Why did you go to the hospital to care for Fang Muyang?” She had thought of countless reasons, but none fully convinced her.
If Fei Ni didn’t want to answer, she should have countered with “Why didn’t you go care for Fang Muyang?” Instead, she considered the question: “If I hadn’t gone to care for him in the hospital, I would have regretted it.”
Everything Fei Ni said was true, just not complete. She would have regretted it before because even if there was only a one-in-a-thousand chance of getting into university through caring for Fang Muyang, she had to try—not trying would have led to regret. Now, she would regret it because she didn’t want to lose her husband.
Fei Ni had no regrets, but Ling Yi did.
Ling Yi said nothing more, bidding farewell to Fei Ni. She wanted to say sorry but remembered Fei Ni saying forgiveness was Fang Muyang’s prerogative. Fang Muyang had forgiven her too early—whether because he had seen through her cowardice or cared too little about her, she sometimes wished he had forgiven her later, or never forgiven her at all. At least that would have meant he once had expectations of her or cared about her. But only sometimes.
As Ling Yi turned to leave, Fei Ni told her: “If what you say is true, Fang Muyang will clarify it.”
Ling Yi still didn’t understand Fang Muyang well enough. He would never be moved by these romantic tales of devoted love—he would only think the protagonists foolish, especially if he was one. If it wasn’t true, he would want to clarify; if it was true, he wouldn’t want it public.
Ling Yi stood there, pausing for a long while before finally uttering two words: “Thank you.”
Fei Ni didn’t hear these words; she had already turned and walked away.
If she didn’t get to the school gate soon, Fang Muyang would come looking for her inside the campus.